Govt relies on Facebook “narcissism” to spot fake marriages, fraud

We all know people who wantonly approve friend requests online, no matter who …

Can the government get a full picture of who you are by friending you on Facebook and monitoring your friends and family? The Department of Homeland Security thinks so, and is apparently willing to pose as that hot girl next door in order to become your friend.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently got its hands on a DHS document titled "Social Networking Sites and Their Importance to FDNS" (PDF) as part of its work on social network surveillance. The document generally details how social networks function and provides a list of popular sites that people around the world like to use, including Facebook, Badoo, Imeem, MySpace, Windows Live Spaces, and others.

However, the document also highlights to agents the importance of amassing a lengthy friend list to many social network users, and how they can take advantage of it. "Narcissistic tendencies in many people fuels a need to have a large group of 'friends' link to their pages and many of these people accept cyber-friends that they don’t even know," reads the document. "This provides an excellent vantage point for FDNS to observe the daily life of beneficiaries and petitioners who are suspected of fraudulent activities."

Agents are encouraged to take the opportunity to reveal fraud by poking around in people's profiles to see whether they are in valid relationships or are attempting some other kind of fraud to get into the country. "Once a user posts online, they create a public record and timeline of their activities. In essence, using MySpace and other like sites is akin to doing an unannounced cyber “site-visit” on a [sic] petitioners and beneficiaries," instructs the DHS.

As noted by the EFF, the memo doesn't require DHS agents to reveal their government affiliation (or even their real names) before sending friend requests, nor does it specify what level of suspicion agents must have before trying to friend someone for surveillance.

On top of this, the DHS also monitored (PDF) a number of social networks for "items of interest" in the months leading up to President Obama's inauguration in 2009. In addition to the usual suspects (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, Blogger, Craigslist, Wikipedia, and Flickr), the DHS also monitored the sites for certain demographic groups, such as MiGente and Black Planet, as well as NPR and DailyKos.

Although the document emphasizes that personally identifiable information shouldn't be collected, it later says that anything publicly divulged is open season for further analysis.

The EFF sharply criticizes the government for its data collection on citizens and non-citizens alike, as well as its apparent opaqueness when it comes to friending people online. The one major lesson for users, however, is to always be skeptical of friend requests from people you don't know. Is your online privacy worth the tradeoff for one more mark on the nightstand? As senior editor Nate Anderson pointed out while discussing this piece, there are apparently benefits to being a Facebook curmudgeon after all.

56 Reader Comments

Are you sure it was senior editor Nate Anderson? Perhaps ... "[w]e're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start. All that we're asking in return is your cooperation in bringing a known terrorist to justice."

Do you not feel that narcissism is one of the big drivers behind the popularity of social networking? I have always felt that people who are deeply involved in managing their social networks do it out of a need to have others be interested in their lives. I get the whole "it's easy to communicate with your friends", but instant messaging and email also make it easy.

I'm not a big fan of government surveillance generally. In this case, I would be surprised if DHS didn't make use of social networking in this way.

A meat-space analogy: A huge convention hall where everyone gets a private room to display, well, whatever the heck they want. They also control who comes in. Some people control access to their rooms very tightly. Others like the prestige of a packed room. Anyone saying "can I come in?" gets accepted. If an undercover gov't agent gets let in, and the person in question put everything on display themselves, then what the agent sees and overhears others in the room talking about are fair game.

I'm certainly no expert on law, but it seems to me that voluntarily posting info online and not really caring who sees it means fair game for law enforcement.

I hope there is an appeals process for this though. I can certainly see how wall posts and pics on facebook may be misunderstood or taken out of context by a DHS agent who isn't aware of the inside joke, etc.

What were you expecting? That only people who like read and dissect your life that you publicly display on Facebook? I guess Mark Zuckerberg doesn't have an issue with that as privacy is a thing of the past anyway. Go figure

This honestly sounds pretty reasonable. If you're defrauding the government, and post about it on the internet, I don't see why you should get a free pass. Fraud is fraud. Either don't do it, or don't tell people you're doing it.

This doesn't surprise me in the least. Since the beginnings of the whole social networking thing, I've been consistently floored by the number of people willing to happily surveil themselves voluntarily and publicly, 1984-style. It was only a matter of time before the spooks copped on.

Honestly just sounds like a good way to root out which stupid people are committing fraud. If I had a fake wife I would definitely make sure to cultivate a Facebook profile with lots of pictures of us and fake lovey-dovey messages.

This honestly sounds pretty reasonable. If you're defrauding the government, and post about it on the internet, I don't see why you should get a free pass. Fraud is fraud. Either don't do it, or don't tell people you're doing it.

This is the "if you haven't done anything wrong you don't have anything to worry about it" line of argument, and it's a slippery slope inevitably leading to 1984.

This honestly sounds pretty reasonable. If you're defrauding the government, and post about it on the internet, I don't see why you should get a free pass. Fraud is fraud. Either don't do it, or don't tell people you're doing it.

This is the "if you haven't done anything wrong you don't have anything to worry about it" line of argument, and it's a slippery slope inevitably leading to 1984.

I completely disagree--this isn't about not doing anything wrong, this is about being stupid enough to post on a public forum about it.

This honestly sounds pretty reasonable. If you're defrauding the government, and post about it on the internet, I don't see why you should get a free pass. Fraud is fraud. Either don't do it, or don't tell people you're doing it.

This is the "if you haven't done anything wrong you don't have anything to worry about it" line of argument, and it's a slippery slope inevitably leading to 1984.

Seems a little different to me though, I agree that in general a "you did something wrong therefore it's your own fault" view is dangerous but the important part here is "don't tell people you're doing it".

In this case you need to look at whether Facebook is "public" or not. If you say something out loud at a party and didn't realise there was a federal agent in the room, they're still going to investigate you afterwards. They don't need to walk around with a sign saying "FEDERAL AGENT" just in case you feel like saying something stupid.

The only real issue is lying about who they are in order to get this information. But it's not even entrapment if they are (unlike police pretending to be prostitutes or drug dealers, which happens). More along the lines of driving an unmarked police vehicle.

I don't accept random friend requests on Facebook. I got one friend request from a girl that was friends with a couple people on my friend list. I sent these people a message asking who this girl was. None of these people knew who she was. So, I have friends that accept random friend requests, but I sure don't.

If you don't understand how the internet works by now, I really can't feel that bad for you when your wife discovers your mistress via Facebook, or if federal agents use the 50 photos of guns and drugs along with conversations of illegal activity you uploaded to a social networking site, against you in a court of law.

What is more distressing to me in this article, is the apparent grey-area when it comes to defining a "person of interest", and how a government may be using social networking sites to monitor people even though no hard evidence of a crime may have been committed. When the report states (people who are)"suspected of fraudulent activities", - what does that mean exactly? Any U.S. citizen that may have married someone from another country can now expect their Facebook profile to be put under a magnifying glass by a government agency? Is such scrutiny first approved by a federal judge with a warrant to do so? Would this monitoring extend outwards to any friends, family or children that the initial subject may have? If it was discovered that the subjects teenage child was using marijuana during the course of this "investigation" by peering into that child's Facebook page, and a subsequent arrest of that child was made because of the monitoring taking place, would this be considered a justifiable arrest?

Even if this is just used to curtail the potential amount of undesirable criminal immigrants that may be looking for ways to enter the country, how far along before such tactics are used against U.S. citizens in all manner of crimes, and what boundaries will agencies be restricted to, if any? Are we comfortable with the fact that your new friend from Topeka might actually be an agent who's going over your profile and album photos from that vacation in Aruba, trying to dig up a little dirt on you only because a jealous neighbor made a call to the IRS and said there's no way you could afford a new car and a nice home and a cruise to the Caribbean?

I'm all for monitoring the activities of KNOWN criminal elements... or people who have demonstrated themselves to be enough of an interest, that monitoring their movements and contacts would be considered prudent.... A guy who's a suspected terrorist, and has a Facebook page? - monitor away. This however sounds more like a fishing-expedition, where agents try to "friend" as many people as possible, all the while looking for anything and everything that could be used to build criminal cases with. If there is no requirement for a level of suspicion, then that means anyone could be investigated at any time, for anything. How wonderful! This goes along nicely with the governments new right to track anybody through GPS, and their push for backdoor encryption in your email. Remember, citizen: Only people with something to hide would be concerned about government in their private life!

I guess I'll have to start dumping the 327 Facebook friends I DON'T really know in person, and just hang on to the 5 that I have in real life. Feels bad, Man.

I get the whole "it's easy to communicate with your friends", but instant messaging and email also make it easy.

I don't mean to distract the thread, but I think it's worth pointing out the substantial difference between communication channels that are "push" vs. "pull". IM and email are push -- you have to actively choose who you're communicating with and that active choosing carries an implicit assumption that the recipient should read and respond if necessary. Facebook, Twitter and the like are "pull" -- the recipient is the one choosing whether they want to be receive the message, and there's no implicit expectation that they will respond.

IMO, there's almost as big of a difference between push and pull communication as there is between realtime and non-realtime communication.

This has been an issue with Facebook's privacy and "friend management" from the start. People live segregated lives; they have family contacts, friend contacts, work/business contacts, and in the world of Facebook it sometimes makes sense to add proplr to your friend list that you don't know well or at all. Part of the benefit of a social network is meeting people through your common network. The problem is that Facebook does not make it easy to segregate your friend list. Someone is either your friend, or they're not. And by default, friends get access to everything. You can sort of do this now with lists and security controls, but they're a pain in the ass and don't really work well for the purpose of segregating your life.

What is more distressing to me in this article, is the apparent grey-area when it comes to defining a "person of interest", and how a government may be using social networking sites to monitor people even though no hard evidence of a crime may have been committed. When the report states (people who are)"suspected of fraudulent activities", - what does that mean exactly? Any U.S. citizen that may have married someone from another country can now expect their Facebook profile to be put under a magnifying glass by a government agency? Is such scrutiny first approved by a federal judge with a warrant to do so? Would this monitoring extend outwards to any friends, family or children that the initial subject may have? If it was discovered that the subjects teenage child was using marijuana during the course of this "investigation" by peering into that child's Facebook page, and a subsequent arrest of that child was made because of the monitoring taking place, would this be considered a justifiable arrest?

Why would you find this more distressing. Just about everything you've described here has a pretty direct analog in meatspace. i.e. I don't need a warrant to tail / monitor you.

I think it's obvious that the highest agencies (mainly the NSA and CIA) have full access to everything on Facebook and Google. Only the FBI and state/local police are forced to obtain warrants and play by the rules.

I think this is one case where there is a very good analogy to meat-space. If a police officer comes to your door and asks permission to take a look a look around your house without a warrant, you can choose to let allow or you deny access. But in this case you are informed. You know he's an officer acting in official capacity. If an officer comes to your door wanting to collection intel but without a warrant, dressed as the AC repair man, and says he wants to come in to take a look at the AC, that's not kosher.

Likewise, if officer Bob wants to collect information from me by friending me on Facebook, if it's clear in his name/profile that he is a police officer on official business, that's fine. If Bob is pretending to be Susie Hotchick, that's a problem.

I think this is one case where there is a very good analogy to meat-space. If a police officer comes to your door and asks permission to take a look a look around your house without a warrant, you can choose to let allow or you deny access. But in this case you are informed. You know he's an officer acting in official capacity. If an officer comes to your door wanting to collection intel but without a warrant, dressed as the AC repair man, and says he wants to come in to take a look at the AC, that's not kosher.

Likewise, if officer Bob wants to collect information from me by friending me on Facebook, if it's clear in his name/profile that he is a police officer on official business, that's fine. If Bob is pretending to be Susie Hotchick, that's a problem.

You make some good points, I think.

But, then again, if someone is working under cover, they don't need to have a warrant to enter your house. There's a parallel there that you haven't considered.

Eh... I'm in the group who constantly bickers at people that will accept anybody and everybody on Facebook (seriously, if I know the person I'll also know the name, and I really don't want my data mined). All the same, people do act differently on Facebook/whatever than they do in everyday life, so this may be a fairly inaccurate measure of fraudulent activity.